Listening to Data

Menu

Tag Archives: US Government

The first ten amendments are descriptive of pre-existing rights the population perceived it already enjoyed before ratifying the constitution. A major reason why the courts so often have to make decisions on grounds of these first ten amendment is because the ruling majority has newer more modern understanding of natural rights of citizens.

All three branches are redundant in terms of being represented by the population. As a result, the modern US government consists of three implementations of a representative democracy: one where representatives come from roughly equal-population districts, one where representatives come from arbitrary geographic boundaries of individual states, and one where there is just one representative for the entire country. Instead of the checks and balances driving the debate, we have an argument about which form of representative government is most legitimate and should have priority over the other forms.

The Vox article suggests a near-term solution that the existing constitution should support. Vox describes the mechanism as shady, but it would be less so if the states were to agree to cooperatively adopt a legislative approach to selecting electors so that we can dispense with popular elections of presidents. If uniformly practiced by all states, it would not appear as evil as Vox expects. This shift could instead be seen as a positive development when we notice the value of restoring a state-legislature voice to the federal government and the eliminations of the political chaos produced by popular presidential elections.

After rereading my recent post, I found myself disagreeing with it. The article implies that a third party can be constructed to attract the middle and overwhelm or at least compete with the other two. While I grant it is possible for something new to emerge, that it not really what I am thinking.…

Early in 2008, I was very encouraged that we were about to do something about about the growing national debt. There seemed to be a growing consensus that the debt (at that time) was too high and growing too quickly. A consensus was growing that we need to come together to make hard choices…

My last post Government by history instead of by law concludes by the idea that democracy is reduced to mere act of budgeting an otherwise autonomous government and that budget is from increasing debts. Increased debts robs the future. It only later occurred to me that I described something zombie-like. The government is like a zombie…

The way I understand our government is to view the constitution as a starting point that enabled the accumulation of precedents that is specific to our history. We started with a constitution that was ratified only after vigorous debate. This debate analyzed every aspect of the document to capture a consensus view of how a…